The Mid-Prairie Golden Hawk boys wrestling team travels north Thursday for a River Valley Conference quadrangular at Northeast Goose Lake High School against Bellevue, Camanche and the home Rebels. The Hawks are 3-10 on the dual season after dropping four of five over the weekend at the English Valleys tournament, with a win over Montezuma and losses to Williamsburg, Iowa Valley, Grinnell and the home Bears. According to Class 2A rankings from Iawrestle.com, the Golden Hawks have one ranked wrestler in their lineup with Burke Berry No. 12 at 285lbs. Max Howe has a team best 11 wins. He and teammates Mason Howe, Tommy Miller and Berry all have 10 wins or more. Collin O’Rourke, Peyton Fox, and Quinn Callahan all have records over .500 this year. This week, Golden Hawk head coach Duncan McCain talked with KCII Sports about the next step for his team to work on through the January grind.
McCain said, “I would like to see them become more aggressive and looking for their scores. I want to see them wrestling on their toes, not flat-footed. We need heavier hands, working to move our opponents and open up those scores. We need to have the confidence to do the things it takes to win a match. Saturday, a few of our guys were wrestling their matches like they just didn’t want to lose, instead of taking the risks and doing the things they needed to do to win. We’re going to be looking to open up our offense a lot more and become more aggressive.”
The Golden Hawks swept this event a season ago, beating Bellevue 57-12, Camanche 60-21 and Northeast 63-18.
Bellevue is 5-10 on the dual season. They dropped a 45-22 contest to Dubuque Wahlert Saturday. The Comets have one ranked wrestler in their lineup with Jake Hiland No. 10 in Class 1A at 165lbs. He’s the team leader with 15 wins. Porter Bailey at 126, Oliver McCutcheon at 144, Aiden Harms at 150, and Seth Smith at 165 all have double digit wins.
Camanche is 0-7 this dual season. They wrestled at Maquoketa’s Zimmerman Invitational Saturday where they placed 11th as a team with Olyver Fuller winning the championship at 165lbs.
Northeast Goose Lake is 0-10 on the dual season. They were also at the Maquoketa tourney over the weekend where they finished 12th, led by Grant Gray’s title at 285lbs. He’s the Rebel leader at 17-1 this season, followed by 15 wins at 165lbs for Santiago DeLaCruz.
Action starts tonight at 5:30p.m. At Northeast Goose Lake High School.